Sunday, April 5, 2015

About today's writing prompt genre: Ekphrasis is from Greek meaning the description of a work of art as a rhetorical device. That's actually pretty straight forward, but another way to look at it, is it's highfalutin fan fiction, usually about paintings or pieces of music, but it can be about virtually anything. Look at or listen to the following piece of art and write a piece of prose or poetry that is inspired by some aspect of it.

Today's artwork is...
The poem "Brother of the Unknown Ancient Man" by James Tate (from his Selected Poems which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award). From poetryfoundation.org about James Tate for those unfamiliar with his work: "James Tate’s poems have been described as tragic, comic, absurdist, nihilistic, hopeful, haunting, lonely, and surreal." I think that's a pretty good summary.

Brother of the Unknown Ancient Man

I think you are in love with more
than a story this is the story of
stories and what you have done with it

The food has been cooked the wine
has been chilled and the guest of
honor is at the bottom of the lake

He had a hunger for the flying
machine funny these white clouds
don't feel like toilet paper

Bony fingers of death heaven knows
when I'll be able to talk to anyone
like I'm talking to you know

I'm in a family way ninety-proof
fiction the party is next door
and that's the way it's always been

What manner of me are these
I hate airports too many airplanes
what could I ever do but love her

Brother of the unknown ancient man
he forsook all earthbound vanities
throw the dirt gently onto his grave.

**

Whether you're inspired by poem's form with jumbledness of some of the lines without punctuation where two ideas are mashed together on the same line, an individual image or phrase from the poem like "ninety-proof fiction" or perhaps a sequence (I really like the L4 through the first word of L8 as the seed for an interesting piece).

A Word About Notebooking

I believe strongly that keeping a notebook of snippets and interesting tidbits of information, dialogue, quotes, observations etc. is of great use to a writer. For one, I think the act of writing it down strengthens your memory of the thing you thought might be memorable enough to write, despite the inability to sit down at the given time to write an entire piece. David Kirby spoke well to the idea of a writer's notebook in an interview with Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace when he said:

I’d have the young poets maintain a stockpile of linguistic bits: stories, weird words, snatches of conversation they’d overheard, lines from movies they’d seen or books they’d read. Most young poets will say something like, “Well, I have to write a poem now. Let’s see; what can I write about?” And then they end up writing about their own experiences, and, let’s face it, we all have the same experiences. So what all poets need is a savings account they can raid from time to time

This site is both a general writing blog, and one to help spark the writer's mind for ten to thirty minutes a day with short exercises which may not be full stories or poems, but will hopefully serve as a reservoir for future works.

About Me

I'm a writer living and teaching in San Diego. I received my BA from California State University, Long Beach, and my MFA from The University of Washington where I was the coordinating editor at The Seattle Review as it transitioned into its current "Long View" form. My writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The North American Review, The New York Quarterly, Permafrost, Bayou, 5AM, The California Quarterly, The Evansville Review, The Georgetown Review, Dark Matter, Cutthroat, Cairn, Miller's Pond, Pearl and The Lullwater Review among others and is forthcoming in ONTHEBUS's long awaited double issue, The Cape Rock and Exit 7. I've been once nominated for a Pushcart Prize and once did not receive a Pushcart Prize. I'm giving facial hair a go now too. Go figure.